The hospital's main building has a maximal capacity of 544 hospital beds; it comprises seven floors with three annex buildings a 50 bed hotel and four villas hosting staff dormitories, outpatient clinics and administrative services.

[1] On February 2, 1979, the Lebanese government decided to build a governmental hospital with a 500-bed capacity on a publicly owned property in Bir Hassan, Beirut.

Due to the advent of the Lebanese Civil War, which significantly weakened the public health care sector, the construction project had to be postponed until 1995[2] when then prime minister Rafik Hariri laid the cornerstone; construction was finalized during 2000.

[1] As of June 2022, the number of doctors at the hospital was down to 15, whereas 60-odd doctors had worked there a few years prior, and approximately a third of the nursing staff (128 of them) had also left the hospital since the Lebanese economic crisis began.

[3] The RHUH staff went on strike on various occasions due to the repetitive delay in receiving their financial dues, the staff expressed consternation since the hospital's administration did not provide consistent causality for the delay in payment of their salaries which has been occurring since 2010.